When using a mobile device, such as a cellular telephone, having a limited display screen area certain accommodations can be made for displaying image content to a user. The image content may be obtained from a remote content provider, such as via the Internet using an Internet browser, or it may be generated locally in the device itself.
One non-limiting example of a mobile device browser of interest to the teachings of this invention is operable as an application that runs under a Series 60™ mobile device software platform that is provided by the assignee of this patent application. For example, the browser may be embodied as a full HTML browser (e.g., HTML 4.01, WAP 2.0).
The browser handles image maps such that, in some cases, initially an entire document image map is displayed as one selectable element on a page, and upon activation of an enlarge or “zoom” function an enlarged portion of the page is displayed to the user. In Series 60 internet browser, and in mobile browsers in general, there can be a limited user input capability in the user interface, e.g., a limited number of input keypad keys. However, there is a need for different types of keyboard shortcuts that need to be placed on, for example, an ITU-T type of keyboard or keypad (i.e., on the keys 1-9, 0, * and #).
Because of the limited set of user input keys certain problems may arise during the use of a browser or some other application that displays information to the user, where the user is expected to navigate within the displayed information using the limited keypad key set.